1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of dispensing medicine and more particularly to an apparatus that automatically fills vials and blister packs with medicine in the form of pills, capsules, gel-caps and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
The dispensing of medicine in the form of pills, capsules, gel-caps, and the like is performed in many ways and in many locations including pharmacies, packaging plants and hospitals. Pharmacies or drug stores employ Pharmacists to fill prescriptions with the prescribed amount of a prescribed medicine or dose. The Pharmacist fills the prescription from a bulk package of medicine into a delivery package sized for the consumer. Although Pharmacists are very careful to dispense the correct quantity of the correct medicine, ever too often, the wrong quantity is dispensed, or worse yet, the wrong medicine is dispensed.
The medicine is often delivered to the consumer in a package that is a container with a lid, for example, a vial or bottle. After counting the prescribed amount of medicine, the Pharmacist funnels the pills into the container, attaches the lid and places a label on the container indicating what medicine is stored inside and information related to the medicine. Again, the transfer of pills into the container creates another opportunity for one or more pills to be lost, thereby not providing the proper amount to the consumer.
With some consumers, it may be difficult to remember which pill to take, when to take it, and even whether they have already taken the pill. To overcome this problem, an array pack was devised with a series of compartment resembling cups or blisters, each “blister” containing one or more pills that are to be taken at the same time. This form of packaging is known as “blister packs,” “dose packs,” “bingo cards,” and “punch cards.” In some uses of blister packs, a common pill type (or multiple of a common pill type) is present in each blister of the blister pack, as with many cold medicines. In such, a card with a single dose in each blister is packaged in a simple box with labels and advertising on the outside. In some uses of blister packs, various pill types (or multiple of a common or various pill types) are present in each blister of the blister pack. For example, a blister pack may have 28 compartments with a first pill type in every compartment to be taken one a day and a second pill type in every 7th compartment to be taken once a week.
Although a huge benefit to the consumer, filling the blister pack with a prescription involves the Pharmacist sitting down and laboriously dispensing the doses by hand into the individual blisters of the pack, then sealing the back. Furthermore, for prescriptions in which the dosage varies by day, extra attention to detail is required because each blister may have different quantities of pills or pills of a different strength or a combination of such, again feeding into the probability of error.
Presently, automation equipment is available for automatically filling prescriptions from a plurality of pill storage bins (or cassettes). Each storage bin is filled with a supply of a given medicine in pill, capsule or gel-cap form. The storage bin has an electromechanical dispensing control and the dispensing control is controlled by a machine control that has, for example, a user interface for the Pharmacist to enter the medicine name, strength and quantity, thereby initiating the dispensing of that number of pills. The pills are then directed into a vial.
The art of filling containers with pills is quite old, going back to U.S. Pat. No. 2,457,220 to Fowler, et al issued Dec. 28, 1948; which is hereby incorporated by reference and describes a motorized pill dispensing machine. This machine has one storage area for a supply of pills that are thereafter handled by the machine in groups of a known quantity. As the machine rotates, the pills fall into receptacles numbering that known quantity, then as it further rotates, that number of pills falls through an opening, into a funnel and then into a pill container in the shape of a bottle or vial. This device is limited to dispensing a fixed quantity of a single type of pills into bottles.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,318,051 B1 to Preiss, issued Nov. 20, 2001; which is hereby incorporated by reference describes a device for dispatching singular items from a single supply station into product packs (blister packs) of the same type and is useful in an assembly line process of filling blister packs with a single medication. This device is limited to dispensing a single type of pill into a single type of blister pack. Likewise, U.S. Pat. No. 6,805,259 B2 to Stevens, et al, issued Oct. 19, 2004; hereby incorporated by reference, also describes a tablet dispenser that dispenses tablets from multiple reservoirs into blister packs. Although not limited to one medication as the previous patents, this device is limited to dispensing only into blister packs.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,925,774 B2 to Peterson, issued Aug. 9, 2005 is hereby incorporated by reference. It describes a machine a machine for filling blister package cavities. This device does not fill vials and to do so, a pharmacy would need to purchase a second machine.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,006,894 to de la Huerge, issued Feb. 28, 2006 is hereby incorporated by reference. This patent describes a device for filling a medication cassette which is then provided to a patient in a hospital setting. The disclosed device does not fill vials and/or blister packs from a plurality of canisters.
Unfortunately, the prior art does not anticipate and properly correct situations in which either the supply of pills in the cassette is depleted or if a given target package (blister pack or vial) is not large enough to hold the desired number of pills.
What is needed is a method and apparatus that will accurately fill a prescription from a plurality of cassettes into a target package (either a vial or into a blister pack) and properly recover when the cassette is empty and/or the target package is full.